“Rules are rules.”
Catherine tensed, her gaze fixed eagerly on the departing figures. They entered the shadows. Soon their footsteps faded. She jumped to her feet and streaked toward the open gate.
A shout!
Dear Mary, someone had seen her!
Footsteps on the cobblestones.
Please God, don’t let them catch me.
She tore through the vegetable garden.
She couldn’t hear them behind her any longer. Was it because they were running on the soft earth instead of on the cobblestones or was she not their prey?
Her heart pounded so hard she was sure it would burst.
The blood drummed in her temples.
She was running among the graves. Why had she never noticed the moss growing on the crosses looked like rivulets of blood?
Sister Bernadette. She must reach Sister Bernadette.
She heard something behind her. A laugh? She was afraid to glance over her shoulder to see.
It could have been the wind.
Oh, let it be the wind.
Gabriel’s marble wings shining in the moonlight. Sister Bernadette’s tomb. She frantically shoved the bolt aside, dashed into the crypt, and slammed the door behind her.
No bolt on the inside.
Of course not. The dead needed no locks.
She backed away from the door.
Her hip collided with the marble sarcophagus.
She scarcely felt the pain as she sank to her knees beside Juliette’s easel. The darkness pressed in on her, taking her breath.
She leaned her hot cheek against the cold marble of the sarcophagus, her gaze straining toward the door.
Protect me, Sister Bernadette. You were only tenand eight when you died. You must have wanted to live too.
Protect me. Don’t let them find me.
Dear God,whyhad she come here? This tomb wasn’t a sanctuary.
It was a trap.
The door of the crypt swung open.
SIX
Sacre bleu, you’ve almost got the rope gnawed through. What an industrious vixen you are.” Raoul Dupree held the lantern in his hand closer to the ropes and smiled at Juliette as he cut the bonds with his sword. “If I’d been gone only a few minutes more, you might have freed yourself. But life is filled with might-have-beens, isn’t it?”
Juliette hastened to mask her disappointment. She refused to give thecanaillethe satisfaction. “You might as well have stayed away. I’ll give you no pleasure.”
